Secret Reports Say Bergdahl Converted to Islam and Declared Jihad

Fox News is reporting that a company that contracted with the Army to deliver intelligence monitored POW Bowe Bergdahl from the early days of his captivity until 2012.

During that time, the contractor — an outfit known as the Eclipse Group — says that after resisting for a while, Bergdahl eventually converted to Islam and declared himself “a warrior for God.”

The reports indicate that Bergdahl’s relations with his Haqqani captors morphed over time, from periods of hostility, where he was treated very much like a hostage, to periods where, as one source told Fox News, “he became much more of an accepted fellow” than is popularly understood. He even reportedly was allowed to carry a gun at times.

The documents show that Bergdahl at one point escaped his captors for five days and was kept, upon his re-capture, in a metal cage, like an animal. In addition, the reports detail discussions of prisoner swaps and other attempts at a negotiated resolution to the case that appear to have commenced as early as the fall of 2009.

The reports are rich in on-the-ground detail — including the names and locations of the Haqqani commanders who ran the 200-man rotation used to guard the Idaho native — and present the most detailed view yet of what Bergdahl’s life over the past five years has been like. These real-time dispatches were generated by the Eclipse Group, a shadowy private firm of former intelligence officers and operatives that has subcontracted with the Defense Department and prominent corporations to deliver granular intelligence on terrorist activities and other security-related topics, often from challenging environments in far-flung corners of the globe.

The group is run by Duane R. (“Dewey”) Clarridge, a former senior operations officer for the Central Intelligence Agency in the 1980s best known for having been indicted for lying to Congress about his role in the tangled set of events that became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. He was pardoned by the first President Bush in December 1992 while on trial. A New York Times profile of Clarridge published in January 2011 disclosed the contractual relationship Eclipse had with the Pentagon, through subcontractors, and reported further that Clarridge’s activities had included efforts to help find Bergdahl.

Clarridge told Fox News his group enjoyed a subcontract from U.S. Central Command, or CENTCOM, headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, from November 2009 through May 31, 2010, and that after the contract was terminated, he invested some $50,000 of his own money to maintain the network of informants that had yielded such detailed accounts of Bergdahl’s status.

Allahpundit asks: if this is true, where’s the propaganda video from the Taliban?

Obvious question: How can you prove that a “conversion” like this is sincere and not given under extreme duress? Remember, one of Fox News’s own employees was taken prisoner by jihadis a few years ago and fake-converted to Islam to save his own life. Sounds like Bergdahl resisted at first, even to the point of trying to escape (a claim corroborated by the Daily Beast), and then was gradually broken as his captivity endured. Rosen himself raises the possibility of “Stockholm Syndrome” in the story.

Gen. James Mattis, the former head of CENTCOM, says he may have received “bits and pieces” of Eclipse’s intelligence over the years but not any of their situation reports. He said he never saw any evidence that Bergdahl was a collaborator, though. Quote: “We had tactical units that were involved in the fight. We had SIGINT. Any collaborators who were on the other side and who came over to our side. We kept an eye on this. … There was never any evidence of collaboration.” Among the missing evidence is the propaganda video the Taliban normally could have and would have forced Bergdahl to make if it had an American soldier in its midst willing to declare jihad. Emphasis on “normally,” though: In Bergdahl’s case, since they were looking to swap him for Taliban prisoners from the very beginning, they may have decided to pass on the conversion video for fear that the U.S. wouldn’t make a deal for him once it went live.

Allah speculates that the reason there is no video is that the Taliban may have believed advertising Bergdahl’s conversion would have lowered his stock considerably and they wouldn’t have been able to get the deal they eventually got. It raises an intriguing question: at what point might the Taliban release a video trumpeting Bergdahl’s conversion?

According to the account at CNN, the only controversy here is the lack of notification of Congress beforehand, which is a mere technicality; and the only reason it's being ginned up into a controversy is because of 'hyper partisan politics' (read: those obstructionist Rethuglicans again).

You guys live in as much of a hothouse as the libtards do. Two thirds of America will never hear and never know about any of this. They're not dumb. They're victims of enemy agitprop. You need to understand the enemy before you can fight him.

What did Bergdahl write BEFORE he abandoned his post? Do we have those statements?

Seems like they might be relevant, at least to anyone who wants to know the truth.

If he wrote that he hated America and sympathized with the enemy, some people might weigh that evidence. And if we are to disbelieve "liars" on everything they say, don't ask anyone in the Obama administration what time it is...because they are all proven serial liars.

From the reports of his unit ...a "conversion" wouldn't be a long trip for Bergdahl. But, some people are calling them liars, psychopaths and swift boaters as well.

Time to throw weasel words at EVERYONE who brings facts and evidence forward that doesn't whitewash treason.

No man left behind, without leftist traitors throwing the troops under the bus.

Howdy NYChemistActually, that would be, "unless you are the deserter." And we even try to bring them home, as we have done with Bergdahl. Right now, it's fuzzy whether we got him released or got him extradited in a way.Looking for the most generous possible view for Bergdahl, the Taliban did hand him over. I assume he chose that, although it's possible he really wanted to stay and the Taliban really didn't want him.